The Genius Wars

  Unless, in the meantime, a nurse happened to raise the alarm.

  Cadel tried to reduce the risk of such an unlucky occurrence. First he drew his bed-curtains tightly together, screening his empty bed from view. Then he turned on the bathroom light and closed the bathroom door. He figured that, if one of the nurses should look in on him, a light in his bathroom might suggest that he was emptying his bladder. It was a feeble sort of ploy, but it might buy him a minute or two. And a minute could make all the difference.

  From his bathroom, Cadel moved into the hallway – though not without first checking that the coast was clear. It was. To his right, the hallway was completely deserted. To his left, the nurses’ station was barely visible from where he stood, so he didn’t know if there was anyone at the desk.

  If there is, he thought, I’ll just say that I’m searching for Reggie. I’ll ask where he’s gone.

  But he couldn’t hear any voices or keystrokes coming from that direction. And when he finally reached the well-lit reception area, no one challenged him – because there was no one in sight. The desk was unattended. The chairs were empty. And the doctor’s office behind the desk was, for the time being, unoccupied.

  Cadel didn’t hesitate. He knew that there was a computer in this office, having caught a glimpse of it earlier, as he was being wheeled past reception. So he ducked straight into the small, shadowy, windowless room, leaving its door only slightly ajar. This, he knew, was his best chance. If he was discovered in any other ward, there would be hell to pay. But if he was surprised in this particular office, he could always claim that he was trying to email someone. Or he could pretend to be a little dazed, from the lingering effects of his head injury. Or he could say that he was looking for his bodyguard. Any one of these excuses would earn him no more than a reprimand. There would be no attempt to call security – of that he was quite convinced.

  Sure enough, he found the computer. It was sitting on a desk under a whiteboard, quietly humming to itself. In the eerie glow of its monitor screen, he was able to log onto the hospital system without any trouble; it took him less than five minutes to change his admission details, despite the fact that he was working in the dark, on his knees, with his chin barely clearing the keyboard. For someone like Cadel, the system’s firewalls weren’t hard to penetrate. He even wondered, for one awful moment, if he was being lured into a trap. But he quickly realised that he wasn’t.

  He also realised that, if Vee wasn’t already rifling through the hospital databanks, he soon would be. They were too tempting a target for Vee to ignore.

  Cadel felt so much safer down on the floor that when he’d finished, he crawled out of the office like a rat or a cockroach. His luck was still holding; there was no one else around. So he slunk into the storeroom next door to the office, where he found a cupboard full of bandages. This supply he raided with grim resolve, because he needed bandages – and bandage clips, too. I’ll pay for them later, he decided, as he concealed several large rolls of gauze beneath his dressing gown. Then he moved towards the exit, which lay at the end of another long, dim hallway.

  Not for one moment did he consider doubling back to visit Sonja. He would have loved to say goodbye, but he couldn’t afford to waste a second. On the contrary, he had to shut Sonja out of his thoughts so that he could concentrate on more urgent matters – like getting past all the doors that flanked his escape route. There were any number of bathrooms, cupboards and offices to be passed on his way out of the ward, and each of them might contain a whole crowd of people. Padding along a strip of grey carpet, barefoot and damp with sweat, Cadel tried not to look anxious. So what if he was stepping outside? That didn’t mean he wouldn’t be back again.

  If I get caught, I’ll tell them I’m going to get a packet of chips from one of those vending machines, he told himself, averting his eyes from the nearest kitchen. Somewhere inside it, an electric kettle was boiling. He could smell coffee, and hear the low murmur of a conversation. But he couldn’t see anyone – and no one could see him. Yet.

  When he reached the big double doors under the exit sign, his stomach turned over. What if Reggie was about to push through them? What if Cadel had miscalculated, and Reggie had simply popped out to buy a chocolate bar?

  But no. That was impossible. Cadel had heard Reggie on the phone; Gazo must have called the Surgical High Dependency Unit, or why would Reggie have been reassigned? A suspicious call had been made, the police had been alerted, and now Saul had been placed in a high-risk category. Hence Reggie’s redeployment. Hence the fact that he had left hurriedly, before his relief arrived.

  Taking a deep breath, Cadel pushed through the double doors. Beyond them he could see nothing but a wide, empty hallway hung with children’s artwork. Signs pointed everywhere: to the next ward, to the elevators, to something called the Starlight Room. In the harsh electric light, everything had a worn and slightly battered appearance.

  Cadel headed straight for the fire stairs. He thought it unlikely that he would encounter anyone in this echoing concrete shaft at four o’clock in the morning, and he was right. He didn’t. Having descended two flights, he emerged onto the second floor – where the hallways, again, were deserted. So was the mens’ toilets. There wasn’t even a cleaner attending to the urinals; Cadel had an entire bank of mirrors to himself as he wrapped his head in layer upon layer of bandages, leaving only his eyes, mouth, chin and nostrils exposed. Bandaging his scalp was enormously difficult, like trying to gift-wrap a football. But he managed it in the end, and used the leftover gauze to bandage one forearm. The result, he decided, was rather impressive. A professional-looking job.

  The question was: would it pass muster in the Emergency Department?

  Cadel could only hope so, since his whole scheme depended on it. All you have to do, he reminded himself, is walk straight out of here. As long as there were swarms of people in Emergency, distracting the staff and providing ample cover, he was unlikely to attract too much attention. Because it wasn’t as if he’d be walking out on his own – unless, of course, Gazo didn’t show up. If that happened, Cadel would have to turn around and go back to bed.

  He took a lift down to the first floor. Two bleary-eyed nurses were making the same trip, but they pretty much ignored him. And when the lift doors opened, he found himself face to face with a man in hospital scrubs, whose gaze barely flickered as it came to rest on Cadel’s bandages. Clearly, these were busy shift workers with a lot on their minds; it would take more than a mummy in a dressing-gown to spark their interest. Cadel was hugely encouraged by their lack of response. All at once he felt confident that his plan would succeed, despite the fact that he was sweating profusely from every bandaged pore. Though he couldn’t hear much through those bandages – though he was becoming very hot underneath them – he knew that if he could just make it to Gazo’s car without fainting, everything would be all right.

  When he reached the Emergency waiting room, he found it stuffed to the brim with crying babies, restless children, and anguished, argumentative parents. Nevertheless, Cadel spotted Gazo immediately. As instructed, Gazo was sitting a long way from the reception desk, wearing Fiona’s black gown and chador. Only his eyes were visible above the enveloping veil; as they swivelled towards Cadel, there wasn’t a hint of recognition in them. Gazo was staring at Cadel because half the occupants of the waiting room were staring at Cadel. Even among all the fearsome rashes and bleeding lacerations, Cadel stood out like a giant pink gorilla. No one else was wearing a mask made of bandages.

  It wasn’t until he approached Gazo that the eyes beneath the chador suddenly widened. Gazo jumped up. He moved towards Cadel, almost stumbling over his trailing skirts in the process.

  ‘Mummy,’ piped a little girl in pink pyjamas, ‘what’s wrong with that boy’s head?’

  Cadel ignored her.

  ‘Come on,’ he mumbled, reaching for Gazo’s black-clad arm. ‘Let’s go. Now.’

  As they shuffled towards the exit, it occurred to
Cadel that he should have made Gazo bring Sonja’s old wheelchair with him. A wheelchair would have added greatly to the overall effect. Luckily, however, they didn’t need one. Nobody challenged them on their way to Saul’s Corolla.

  Only when they had left the hospital car park entirely did Cadel begin to remove his bandages.

  TWENTY-TWO

  It was almost a year since Cadel had first laid eyes on Clearview House, and even then the place had been run-down. With its rusty gutters, peeling paint and crumbling chimneys, Clearview House had presented a very misleading facade to the world. Though it had certainly looked like an underfunded youth refuge (right down to the bedsheet curtains in the bay window), nothing could have been further from the truth. Tens of thousands of dollars had been spent on computer equipment for the concealed basement; a secret lift had been installed behind a pantry shelf; the entire house had been wired up for a state-of-the-art security system. Disguised as a decrepit old mansion, Clearview House had actually served as Genius Squad’s headquarters.

  Now, however, it was vacant. Cadel knew this because Saul had discussed it with him; the whole future of Clearview House had been troubling the detective for some time. Apparently, the property belonged to Texan oil magnate Rex Austin, who had bought it to accommodate his covert team of hackers and number crunchers. For that reason (and because he had been associating with Prosper English), police in several countries had been trying to interview Rex. But the American billionaire had been uncooperative. After throwing up a wall of lawyers to protect himself, he had pretty much gone to ground. No one had seen him in months. It was generally assumed that he was hiding out, moving from one lavish estate to the next, while he threw money at his legal problems in the hope that they would eventually go away.

  This had left Clearview House in a kind of limbo. Without the owner’s approval it couldn’t be leased or sold. No one wanted to repair a house that belonged to someone else. So it was rotting away, its roof sprouting weeds and its lawn turning into a hayfield.

  ‘Which means that I can use the basement, and no one will know I’m there,’ Cadel explained to Gazo, as they approached Clearview House along a quiet, tree-lined suburban street. ‘What’s more, if Prosper does find me, he won’t be able to wreck the basement with a runaway bus. The house might go, but not the basement.’

  It was now after five a.m., and the sun had risen; empty cars and deserted pavements were tinted with a pale, pinkish glow. Luckily, there were no early-morning garbage trucks or dog-walkers about, so Gazo was able to park unnoticed in front of the big iron gate that barred the way to their destination.

  Set in a high brick wall, this gate had once been sensor-activated, swinging open automatically. Now it was chained shut.

  ‘Can you pick that?’ asked Cadel, eyeing the padlock on the chain. He knew that Gazo had studied lock-picking at the Axis Institute. ‘I really don’t want to climb over the gate, if I can help it.’

  ‘Yeah. I guess,’ said Gazo. He looked decidedly jittery, even though he was no longer wearing his conspicuous Arab outfit. ‘But what if someone spots me?’

  ‘Like who?’ Cadel glanced into the rear-view mirror. ‘The neighbours are all still in bed.’

  Gazo grunted. Then he yanked at the handbrake, climbed out of Saul’s car, and tackled the padlock with a miniature toolkit that he produced from his pocket. It all took a little longer than Cadel had expected. He kept nervously checking the street for signs of life, and was enormously relieved when the chain finally dropped onto the ground.

  ‘I’ll close the gate behind you,’ he offered. ‘Just drive the car around the back of the house – I don’t want anyone seeing it.’

  ‘Are you sure no one’s living here?’ Gazo nervously scanned the boarded-up windows of the building in front of him. ‘Maybe we should knock on the door, just in case. There might be squatters. Or junkies. Or neighbourhood kids.’

  ‘Then you can stink them out,’ Cadel retorted. ‘Come on. We haven’t got much time – people will be leaving for work, soon.’

  He vacated his seat just as Gazo slipped back behind the steering wheel; within seconds the gate had been pushed open, and Saul’s car had rolled past Cadel, heading down the gravel driveway towards Clearview House. Feeling rather exposed, Cadel shut the gate and wrapped the chain around it, loosely. He had changed out of his hospital gown in the car, so he didn’t look too peculiar – even though his clothes were rank and crumpled from their spell in Fiona’s laundry basket. All the same, he didn’t want to be seen. So he quickly followed Saul’s car around the back of the house, where Gazo was waiting.

  Here someone had been busy breaking windows and spraying graffiti. There were shattered bottles in the overgrown flowerbeds, and a shopping trolley had been dumped beside the garage. Grass was sprouting from a chimney pot. The rotary clothesline had been pushed over.

  ‘Why do people write their names on walls?’ Gazo wondered aloud. He was still behind the steering wheel, but was leaning out of the driver’s window. ‘Why do they want people to know who done it?’

  Cadel wasn’t listening. Not far from the kitchen door, embedded in the ground, there was a hatch that led down to the basement; originally this hatch had been built as a kind of coal chute, but it had been converted into an emergency exit when the lift was installed. To disguise this access point, a doghouse had then been glued to the hatch – but the doghouse had since disappeared.

  So where was the hatch?

  ‘What are you doing?’ Gazo demanded, as Cadel poked around among the weeds and brickwork and bits of discarded rubbish. ‘I fought you wanted to go inside?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Then –’

  ‘Hang on.’ Cadel suddenly realised that he was staring at a patch of brick paving that didn’t quite match the surrounding brickwork. One prod revealed that it wasn’t made of bricks at all, but of polystyrene carved and painted by someone with an artist’s eye. Bits of dirt and leaf litter were stuck to the dried paint. A weathered stick, attached to a short length of fishing line, served as a handle.

  Had all this been under the doghouse? Cadel couldn’t remember.

  ‘There won’t be any power,’ he said, giving the handle a tug. Slowly the hatch creaked open. It was heavy, and the weight of it made Cadel gasp.

  ‘Here.’ Gazo was suddenly beside him. ‘I’ll go first.’

  ‘Did you bring a torch? I told you to.’

  ‘It’s in the car.’

  ‘You get it.’ At Cadel’s feet, a flight of concrete stairs led down into a well of darkness. ‘I should have asked you to bring more than one.’

  ‘What about the resta your gear?’ Gazo had found Cadel’s computer in the Corolla’s back seat, near the torch. ‘What about your laptop and your green bag?’

  ‘Leave them.’

  Cadel knew that he wouldn’t be able to restore electricity to Clearview House until he was able to hack into the power grid. But he wouldn’t be able to do that until he could find himself a network connection. And since the likelihood of picking up a wireless signal underground was pretty remote, he figured that he’d probably be taking his laptop for another little trip in the Corolla before very long.

  ‘I’ll need to do a bit of wardriving before you leave,’ he told Gazo, who had retrieved his torch, and was busy locking up the car. ‘Otherwise I won’t have any power. And I can’t live in that basement without power.’

  ‘I dunno if you can live in it wiv power,’ Gazo replied doubtfully, as he rejoined Cadel at the top of the stairs. ‘It might be full of water or garbage or dead rats or somefink.’

  ‘I know.’ Cadel swallowed. ‘That’s why I didn’t do any wardriving on the way. No point if I can’t move in.’

  ‘Are you sure you wanna do this? It can’t be too helfy, down there.’

  ‘It is,’ Cadel insisted. ‘I mean – it was. I used to spend hours in that basement. We called it the War Room.’

  Gazo shrugged. Then he sighed. Then he descended i
nto the shadows, his torch-beam flitting about like an insect, from fusebox to drainpipe to conduit. There was a door at the foot of the stairs, faintly visible in the wash of pallid daylight flooding through the open hatch. Gazo’s torch-beam finally came to rest on a solid steel doorhandle.

  When Gazo reached for this handle, Cadel warned, from behind him, ‘You’ll probably have to pick that lock.’ But the handle turned with a soft click.

  Gazo froze. He glanced back at Cadel.

  ‘Go on,’ Cadel muttered.

  Taking a deep breath, Gazo gave the door a shove. It swung open on creaking hinges. The air that rushed out didn’t smell damp, or even stuffy. It smelled of slightly stale fish and chips.

  In the halo of Gazo’s wandering torch-beam, Cadel saw a plush-covered beanbag, a stainless steel bar fridge, and a pair of sneakers.

  ‘What the hell … ?’ a groggy voice complained. Then the overhead lights snapped on, as Gazo flicked a switch.

  Cadel had to shield his eyes from the glare. Squinting, he realised that the War Room was not the empty concrete shell that he’d anticipated. Nor was it still furnished with all the elaborate computer equipment that had once filled every corner (courtesy of Rex Austin). Most of the technology now on show had quite a frivolous air to it; there were game consoles, and giant amplifiers, and iPhone accessories, and a DVD player, and padded earphones, and a widescreen TV set. Several laptops were also scattered about, among piles of discarded clothing and empty pizza boxes. Over near the elevator doors, a tangle of expensive-looking bed linen had been dumped on top of an old foam mattress.

  Cadel recognised the pale, pimply face peeping out from beneath a gold damask quilt.

  ‘Devin?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Cadel?’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Oh, man.’ Devin grimaced. ‘How’d you track me down? Was it that bloody sister of mine?’

  ‘No,’ said Cadel. ‘I haven’t seen Lexi in six months, at least.’